Home DIY

You may not be used to physical labour, plus you’re probably working at home-owner pace rather than builder pace. There’s a reason they finish early, it’s tough doing 8-10 hour days of manual labour five+ days a week.

Being a young man helps, but also being used to the work counts for a lot too. Even after a decade on the tools, when I retrained as an electrician my hands took way more of a battering than they previously had. And even my physically active and strong mates get absolutely wiped out by doing DIY. Same goes for gardening too. It’s just a very different kind of physical strain. Also, working low down - kneeling or squatting is the absolute pits!
And literally everyone fucks up like that at the end of a hard day. It’s just inevitable.

As for the instagram cabinet maker, just remember that you’re only seeing their highlight reel and not their scrap bin :)

There's also the mental exhaustion of having to do everything else. DIY/construction work is not your job, so you end up having to fit it in around everything else and often do it when others would be relaxing or taking time off. There are many days when I finish a 10 hour day of work (woe is me grafting away, on a chair, typing), then realise "ah, fuck, I need to sand the stairs."

Any jobs I've done when I've taken a weekday off work to do it, are 10 times easier.

Squatting and keeling at odd angles can also fuck off. ms_com's office in the eaves room takes 3 times as long and generates 5 times the cursing that any other job does.